


House Rules

by carolinecrane



Series: Laying Foundations [2]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-26
Updated: 2010-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinecrane/pseuds/carolinecrane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something to be said for being a port in the storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House Rules

It was Reid who made the first move.

Derek hadn't been expecting that. Not that he'd been expecting anything at all, really. He barely even let himself think about it, and the few times he did he imagined a long, slow seduction on his part. He knew he'd have to work for it, just like he knew it would be worth all the effort.

Still, he hadn't been trying. Reid was a lot of things, but experienced wasn't one of them, and Derek didn't want to break anything by pushing for something he couldn't have. He was okay with just friends, with being the one to get Reid's mind off the tough stuff. He was okay with working side by side without talking about anything, because he knew what it did for him, and he was pretty sure Reid got the same thing out of it.

He must, because when they finally ran out of things to do in the first house they renovated together, Reid just sort of followed him to the next one. Then one day he showed up with a list of properties for auction, and just like that they were partners. They never talked about what that meant, but Derek hoped it meant that Reid liked spending time with him. He liked the process for the same reasons Derek did, but just maybe he liked the company too.

Derek wanted it to mean more than that -- he wanted a lot more, more than he was willing to admit even to himself. A relationship with a guy was one thing; Derek had tried to deny that part of himself for a long time, and he still didn't advertise the fact that he swung both ways. For a long time he hated that part of himself, worried that it was just a reaction to the stuff that happened to him when he was too young to protect himself. He hated that part of himself for a long time, but he'd studied enough serial killers to know what happens to people who hate themselves, and he didn't want to become one of them. He didn't want to let Carl Buford take anything else from him; he took Derek's childhood, but he couldn't take away the thrill of making a real connection with another person, no matter what their gender.

So he'd figured out a way to accept who he was, and now...now he wanted to help Reid do the same thing. Even if it didn't lead to anything more than fixing houses together, that was okay with Derek. But he wanted more -- a lot more -- and that was why their first kiss caught him so off guard.

They were on their third house when they got called to Vegas to stop a kidnapper, and once they solved that one they stayed in Vegas to help Reid exorcise some of his demons. Derek knew Reid hadn't really wanted them there, that he'd planned to handle it all himself. But he'd told Derek about the dreams, and he hadn't put up a fight when they stayed, so Derek figured he didn't mind that much. After...well, it ended a lot better than it could have, but that didn't mean it hadn't taken a toll.

Reid was a lot quieter, anyway, less quick to spit out useless facts about whatever the topic of conversation happened to be. He spent a lot of time inside that brilliant, fucked up head of his, and Derek knew he was still working it out. So he let Reid do his thing, gave him his space and didn't try to get him to talk while they tore out cabinets and laid tile. The kitchen was big, bigger than the first two they'd worked on together, and the weird layout was making the tiling take a lot longer than he'd planned. He didn't really mind falling behind schedule, but his back was feeling this job in a big way, and he was starting to wish he'd gone with linoleum instead of ceramic.

"Damn," he muttered when his back twinged again, straightening out to stretch the complaining muscle. "Guess this is what getting old feels like."

He grinned at Reid, but the kid wasn't even looking at him. He was completely focused on the tile cutter, lower lip caught between his teeth as he measured just the right angle before he made the cut. And Derek had to admit, it was nice to have somebody around who could do that kind of math in his head. He watched as Reid cut the tile, letting the extra piece hit the floor with a satisfying crack.

"Perfect," Reid murmured to himself, and Derek smiled at the look of satisfaction on his face. It was the first time he'd seen Reid looking so peaceful since before Vegas, and Derek hoped that meant he was starting to come to terms with his past.

He turned back to the the section of the floor he'd been working on and let out a sigh when he realized how much surface they still had left to cover. "Is it me, or is this kitchen getting bigger?"

"Actually, the total surface area is bigger than advertised, when you take into account the areas of floor under the cabinets and the appliances that still need to be tiled. In fact, I was thinking that we might run out of..."

Reid trailed off as the tile he'd just finished cutting slipped out of his hand and hit the floor, shattering on impact and gauging the tile it had fallen on. "Damn," Reid said, all the peace draining from his expression as he bent over to pick up the shards.

"Reid, be...careful," Derek finished as Reid let out a little yelp and pulled his hand away from a shard of tile. He stuck his finger in his mouth, sucking hard at the cut.

"Here," Derek said, crossing the kitchen to pull Reid's hand away from his mouth and press a clean rag to the cut. "Just hold that there for a second, I'll be right back."

It took him less than a minute to get to his truck and back, first aid kit in hand. When he reached the kitchen Reid was still kneeling in the middle of the room, the rag pressed against his finger as he frowned down at his hands. Derek shook his head and dropped to his knees in front of Reid, reaching out to ease the rag away from his hand.

"It's nothing. Just a scratch."

"Humor me," Derek said, tugging Reid's hand toward his chest. The cut wasn't deep; there was a decent amount of blood, but nothing that required stitches. Still, it looked like it hurt, and if they didn't cover it around all this dust it would get worse. Derek wiped away the rest of the blood with an antiseptic wipe, then he squeezed some antibiotic ointment on Reid's finger and wrapped a Band-Aid around it.

"There you go, pretty boy, good as new," Derek said, letting go of Reid's hand to put the supplies back in the first aid kit.

For a few seconds Reid didn't say anything; he was just watching Derek, frowning in that way he did when they were working a case and he was trying to puzzle something out. It was kind of weird to be on the receiving end of that look, and Derek couldn't help the defensive 'what?' that escaped his lips.

"When you call me that..." Reid paused, head cocked to the side and Derek's stomach did a weird little flip he hadn't felt since high school. "I always thought you were making fun of me."

"Just calling 'em like I see 'em."

If they were in the office he'd grin to show he really was just teasing, to let Reid off the hook in front of the team. But they weren't in the office, and he had a feeling Reid wasn't in the mood for games. It was as close as they'd come to defining what they were doing, though, and after another few seconds of silence Derek started to stand up. He just wanted to give Reid some space, to let him decide whether or not this conversation was going anywhere, or if they'd file it under 'things we don't talk about' and move on.

He got as far as one knee when Reid's hand closed around the front of his shirt, then Reid was kneeling up to meet him and before Derek could react, Spencer was kissing him. It was quick and messy and before Derek really wrapped his brain around the fact that Spencer Reid was _kissing_ him, it was over. It was over and Spencer was kneeling in front of him, breathless and determined and just a little confused, like maybe he wasn't really sure what just happened either.

"Should I not have done that?"

"Depends," Derek said, fighting to control the part of his brain that was screaming at him to grab Reid and kiss him again. "You sure you want to go down this road? It's gonna be pretty tough to take this one back."

"Technically it's already too late for that. Sure, we could pretend it didn't happen, but we'd both know it did. It would color all our interactions, and pretending it didn't would likely strain things even more."

Most of the time Derek found Reid's logic sort of infuriating, and there had been plenty of times when he wished he could find a way to shut Reid up. But when he was right he was right, and Reid was usually right. Derek grinned and closed a hand around the front of Reid's shirt to drag him forward. "Then I guess it won't hurt if we do it again."


End file.
